QoS-based dynamic multicast routing design using genetic algorithms

This paper addresses the problem of determining minimum cost paths to nodes in a Multicast group satisfying delay bounds and delay variation bounds. This study explores the use of Genetic algorithms (GAs) for solving the multicast routing problems when multiple Quality of services (QoS) requirements are presented. Our simulation results indicate that it is critical to select a suitable representation method and a set of appropriate parameters in order to obtain good performance. For a medium network, the probability from 0.02 to 0.2 seems to work better than those of too small or too large. As compared with the other optimal algorithm, the proposed algorithm gives better performance in terms of the success rate, the tree cost, the number of exchanged messages and the convergence time.